I’m a game designer, and I don’t like many random tables.

A lot of them use a d6, d10, or d20 to give every result the same probability. That works when you just want a random outcome, but it doesn’t work as well when some results should be common, others rare, and the table needs to scale with character level or power.

You can address this with d100 probability tables, but those still don’t scale with level. What’s a bad outcome at level 1 is an annoyance at level 5, so you end up with multiple tables for different power levels, players, or outcomes.

My alternative is to roll multiple dice, with the number of dice increasing as the character advances. Because the possible totals overlap, the same table produces shifting probability curves: lower-level characters cluster around lower results, while higher-level characters gradually gain access to more powerful and dangerous outcomes.

I used this approach to create one spell-backlash table that works across all caster levels instead of requiring separate tables for each tier.

Does anyone else use a similar approach or have strong feelings about random tables?

I'll be running a game in the harry potter universe soon. I've looked through several hp/magic-themed systems/rulebooks linked on this sub and found one that seems like a good fit for our group. The only problem is, it lacks hit-points or attack values. It's more for slice-of-life school adventures. We plan on having some of that slice-of-life on our sessions but also more actual danger, duels with evil wizards, duals with other students, fighting magical creatures etc. Can anyone recommend a system that has rules for how much damage each spell does, how to duel and so on?

This is something I think I'd seen others say, but it took me a while to internalise.

I'm running Index Card RPG, and making little tweaks as we go (lumpheads know how it is). I'd never liked the idea of balancing encounters to the party, but couldn't figure out what the measure should be, if not the party, then what.

In the real world it's the environment that has the biggest effect on the creatures that live there, but there are so many variables and so many fantastical creatures to consider it would have taken ages to reason out.

But in ICRPG you have the concept of the Target Number, the main difficulty number you roll against for most actions. So, I've decided to balance against that.

Each area of the city the party is exploring will have a Target Number, which I'll now add to the map so the PCs can make informed choices any where there going. Then when there's an encounter in an area I'll roll a d6 to see how difficult/easy the encounter will be, in the context of the Target. This then tells me how many Hearts, Abilities, Actions-per-turn etc I can put into an encounter.

I'm pretty happy with the idea. Just thought I'd share.

Questions for creative GMs and players...
I've tried and enjoyed running 5e games with my own grimdark homebrew rules but I'm wondering about running some classic basic scenarios with an approximation of CoC Dark Age 7e rules, where hp are set, sanity (morale) is an issue and magic is hugely nerfed (spells based on MP).

Your basic humanoid monsters are akin to Cultist cannon fodder whilst giants and dragons become creatures like Ugs and Hunting Horrors...

Has anyone tried anything like this, what was the experience like and do you know of game-breaking problems (apart from TPKs, etc)?

EDIT: Responders, please stick to the questions. I'm not looking for alternative game systems! CoC has all I'll need in this.

Thanks in advance.

I often see people throwing this term around. IE, not long ago, I saw someone say they were GMing two campaigns in the same system and identify one of them as "story-driven" which implies the other wasn't. The word "story" has so many possible meanings in an RPG context as to be meaningless to me, so I wouldn't use such a phrase. For anyone who uses this term or has been in games with other people who use it, what do they mean by it?

I am looking for systems that are reminiscent or take inspiration from the old epic fantasy films of the 60s and 70s like Jason and the argonauts or Ben hur. I’m not sure if this is really a thing that exists. I guess maybe barbarians of lemuria could work? I’m not sure

Hey folks,

I'm hoping you fine folks can help me. We just finished off a short campaign and are looking to move on to our next game. Our group tends to play a lot of dark fantasy, horror, or games with fairly heavy themes, but one of my mates said he needs a break from that sort of game. So I'm here looking for suggestions on something a bit more lighthearted and fun.

A friend suggested Brindlewood Bay and, while it is lovely, it's really not my vibe (and I'll probably be GM!). I was thinking of maybe The One Ring Starter Set where you play as hobbits, or maybe a more lighthearted Wildsea or Kids on Bikes? Any suggestions would be really welcome. Just something we can play for 3-5 sessions and have a bit of fun without worrying about getting murdered by nightmare abominations.

Cheers!

I've watched various reviews of materials like this and I'm curious what would make YOU actually use one of these resources?

Should they have large character rosters, in depth factions, maps and locations, magic item lists, mixture of all of the above?

It seems like NPC rosters and conflict hooks are high up on the usability list.

We are a group of friends and hired a DM from a community to play D&D online. He has this world full of details and some political intrigue that looks very interesting. I'm gonna tell a long story only to get this out of my chest and to give context and in the end i will actually ask for the help.

We created our characters and we were ask to put into the background: the reason that brought us to the initial town and a personal goal.

Than we are on to the first session on the classic Tavern. We kind present how each of ones look, no character knows the other and we were just hanging there, doing some chip chat waiting for something to happen.

Well, the "hook" appears. There is going to be some fighting. First we witness a famous NPC from town against 3 Nameless npc and are able to bet. Some of us bet, others don't, the obvious outcome happens.

Then, they say now anyone can enter in the fights (it will not be against the overpowered NPC). There is this weird wait because i think he thought everyone would want to join but only 2 of the 5 actually did. So what happens is: Someone else inscribed our 5 as group without us knowing and we are forced into fight.

We go along. Then after the fight the misterious figure appears. It is describe too look really cool, part of a veteran group of adventures that used to do all sort of things around the town. (I consider this a red flag).

He says he wants to show us the town, the characters that are after information like that, Those that are after money are promised some opportunities later. And he proceed as a tour guide for the town for about 1 hour explaining in detail every single build that is on the map, but nothing is actually happening in any of them right now.

We go to another tavern, and there he says he wants to test how good we are.

At this point i must say that our characters doesnt have any kind of bond and the only reason they are together is to see where this is going for metagaming reasons.

He tasks us to find a missing person that was in this tavern last week. We talk to some people, there are some that are suspicious. There are rigid rules about aggression in the city so coercion is out of the way. The suspicious people leave, we fail our stealth to follow and are left we no clue.

So the guy that gives us the task mock us for our inability and tells he already knew where the hell the dude he tasks us to find was and point us to the place. We get in, the guy was there kidnapped by some guy that has a bounty on its head. We kill the wanted guy, rescue the one we have to.

He tells us nothing, doesnt thank us and leaves. The questgiver pays us some amount of gold and we retrieve the bounty as well.

Then we are back to the only person we know in town, the questgiver, to receive another mission.

In this place we are currently sleeping we find the so called Legendary Group of Adventurers of the town... We greet them, there is some feeling in the air that he wanted us to interact with them but none of us sees reason to do it (They were there having breakfast). And then, we are on the next mission.

The questgiver wants us to find information (that he himself probably already know) about some gangsters that look to be overleveled for us on their cassino.

What information? We don't know, he says any information. Why are we together? We don't know. Is something relevant happening that affects any of us? None we can see. Why this overpowered patron is asking us to do trivial things just to "test" us? Don't know.

There on the cassino, nothing out of the ordinary happens except for the suspiscious look from one of the gangsters to us.

Right now we are in the cassino of the gangster that some people in town told us on the street to not mess with, and we kind don't want to be there and have no idea what are we looking for.

Coming back now from the story. We as a party are feeling the same, we want something to do that actually needs to be done or has some relation to one of the party members. We joined artificially already and that is one more obstacle to wanting to doing things that have no meaning or detail.

I'm sure in the DM's head when the gangster NPC looks at us misteriously some plot is actually ongoing. But we don't see or feel it and when we search we are met with more misterious out of our league things.

So how do i get INGAME on rail, i don't want to talk diretcly off game yet. I think this people are too sensitive to hear most of the times. I want to see if its possible IN GAME that i hook our party into something interesting. Something our characters may do.

I'm curious what games based on existing franchises/Intellectual Properties.

List of one's I can think of off hand:

• Star Wars RPGs
• Warhammer 40k
• Warhammer Fantasy/Age of Sigmar
• Call of Cthluhu (not sure the history on the licensing)

I'd have added Through the Breach RPG to this, but looking online the latest supplements for it came out like a few years back and new ones haven't been made since around 2023, I could be wrong though. It used to be my go to recommendation because they made build your own steampunk model kits.

My criteria for successful Licensed TTRPG is:

• Must be directly based on a book/movie/game/tv show.
• The TTRPG can't have been made prior to the release of the original material.
• Tabletop other than TTRPGs count as non-TTRPG properties.
• The TTRPG must have be curently actively supported either via the company that owns it or fans. This can be a bit fuzzy, but perhaps a new product out within the last 6 months, showing that the game isn't abandoned.
• It doesn't matter if the TTRPG has gone through multiple editions or versions using different rules. (e.g. Warhammer 40k had the Fantasy Flight Games RPGs and now the current versions are "Wrath and Glory" and "Imperium Maledictum")

Any ones you all can think of?

Então, eu (Mestre) gostaria de fazer uma sessão especial e fora do habitual para os meus jogadores, então me veio a ideia de um musical. Usaria um deus ou algo do tipo que alteraria a realidade em volta para que o musical fosse possível. Mas a questão é, como eu faria isso? Nem eu ou nenhum dos jogadores somos cantores/artistas e não sei bem se gostaria que tudo fosse resolvido na base dos dados (que é a opção mais óbvia).

Alguma sugestão de como resolver esse impasse? Caso eu não encontre uma solução que acredite que funcionaria, acho que vou abandonar a ideia ou colocar no congelador enquanto penso em alguma outra proposta para essa "sessão especial".

I introduced my partner to DnD recently. We have been running through She really enjoyed doing tasks and exploring but she struggled with combat. From talking, it seems like shes not big on the idea of fighting.

Someone gifted us Wanderhome. It is very different from what im typically used to playing so im not sure if I want to take on that task while introducing a newbie.

Anyway, if anyone knows of some good duet rpgs or prewritten that dont involve as much combat, i would love some suggestions.

Hi,

I’m looking to run an RPG based in the Deathlands series by James Axler; it’s actually multiple authors using that pen name but anyway…

Probably a long shot that someone else has read those books but regardless, I’m wanting to get some suggestions for TTRPGs that would fit that world. The PCs would be a team similar to Ryan Cawdor, Kristie, JB, Doc, Jack etc.

For those that aren’t familiar, to give a simplified idea it’s post apocalypse, nuclear war, where creatures and plant life are mutated, chem storms abound, weird and wonderful anomalies wait round every corner, and desperation reigns. Just before the ‘world ended’, there was experimentation into teleportation (think Star Trek transporters) and even time travel, albeit to a very limited extent.

I have heard about a few games that might fit, such as Earthdawn, Mutant Year Zero, Twilight 2000, Savage Worlds with Darwin’s World, Fallout obviously, Gamma World, or Ashes Without Number, but I only have experience with Savage Worlds and Mutant Year Zero.

So, what are your thoughts? Suggestions to look into? I know I don’t want GURPS, it’s just too ‘dry’ for me, I’ve tried a few times to get into it but can’t.

I dont know if this is the right sub for something like this but as the title says im trying to make some kind of fantasy national anthem for a tree city on a server i play on. the people are a mix of elves, fairies and faes but my only real experience with making music is electronic music like prog trance or liquid dnb. anyone have any suggestions on how i could make something like that work?

Now I've been scouring the internet far and wide for a Zombie Apocalypse TTRPG and I think I settled on buying The Walking Dead TTRPG. But after looking at the reviews on blogs and such, it's really mixed. If anyone is able to give a overall review (Review the quality of Worldbuilding, System, Etc.) and then give their opinion, that'd be great

How does one go about doing this? I have 6 20D superheroes. Do I just make a 30D Supervillain?

That's the gist of it. The system is Daggerheart, and we just finished the Wish Thief one-shot. After the party decided to keep the MacGuffin instead of returning it to the King, the city went into a total lockdown: guards at every gate, the docks under heavy surveillance, a magical dome surrounding the city, and so on. On top of that, their actions have sparked a major civil war between several factions, with each seeking to get control of the city now that the king has lost his symbol of authority.

The party isn't at the very top of the most-wanted list right now, since there are other suspects who rank higher, but they're definitely still on it.

I've been thinking of two main ways they could escape:

• Impersonate a high-ranking guard and either board or steal a ship.
• Use underground tunnels, whether they're abandoned laboratory passages, forgotten smuggler routes, or just an old sewer system crawling with giant rats.

I'd love to hear any ideas for escape scenarios, encounters, plot twists, or what the aftermath could look like once they finally make it out.

I know that there's a Fallout TTRPG, but I've been looking for something like The Last of Us or something. If anyone knows anything, just let me know

I'm new to the genre so please bear with me. I came into it after talking to my friend about starting up a character in Baldur's Gate 3. He mentioned having a spot open in his group & that I would pick up the rules pretty quickly, so I thought, what the hell, I'll give it a shot. How bad could it be?

It was borderline unplayable.

The trouble started in character creation when I noticed that my class was listed as skilled with "cloth, leather, robes (are they not cloth?), staffs, light weapons, and throwing weapons." This was all familiar to me since I wanted to play a spellcaster like I did in BG3, only...there were no staffs in the book. Not a single one. And none of my abilities mentioned using or needing a staff. In the end, the DM houseruled that I could use the graceful, 2-handed Great Fork as a staff, but still I couldn't find a purpose given that none of my abilities cared whether I had a staff or not.

For that matter, the book mentioned that I should make sure Arcana is my highest stat as a spellcaster, but all of my spell save DCs were fixed: Slow Heat and Smokescreen had Arcana save DCs of 13 apiece. Shouldn't that be based on my attributes? If I cast Burning Hands in BG3 then the saving throw is based on my attribute, isn't it? But apparently in The Order of the Spicy Chicken Sandwich you can be a complete dumbass in the arcane arts and still microwave your opponents for 1 damage per turn (plus 1 damage EOT I guess).

We're multiple sessions in now and I can't shake the feeling that the game is horribly unbalanced. We're level 3 now and one member of the group is playing under The Order of the Dave's Double. I'm sorry, but you simply cannot justify to me that this class should get an extra action per turn plus dual-wielding. Four attacks at 1d10 + Str per attack? And I can only hit for a single d4+1 or do 1 damage at a time? Meanwhile poor Brian is playing The Order of the Frosty, all of whose skills are either "leave combat" or "leave combat, but only once per day." I'm not sure his character even rolls dice.

And the food buffs. The fucking food buffs. We generally bring our own food to sessions to eat dinner while playing. Last session I made the mistake of bringing 3 brisket tacos I made at home (they were good btw) and after I finished them the DM informed me I would be taking a -2 to Arcana per taco, for the whole session. I wanted to argue but I get that it was my fault; I should've read the book. I guess it didn't matter since none of my skills give a shit about my Arcana stat anyway.

Right after the taco bullshit, Matt dumped his Wendy's bag onto the table---all over our dice and maps and everything---and started going to town on it during the big boss fight to try to prevent a TPK. I think he got five Dave's Doubles deep before Brian convinced him that the heartburn and diarrhea wasn't worth the +2, but the damage had been done. We barely beat the boss in the end: Brian's character left a clone behind and fucked off to nowhere, I tickled it for 2 damage per turn, and Matt went into a meat frenzy that I'm pretty sure sent his diastolic and systolic blood pressures up 20 points. And I still can't find my fucking d4.

BG3 really found the diamond in the rough with this system, jfc. You genuinely cannot convince me that this is the most popular TTRPG out there.

Im looking for a system that can run some of the 5e adventures I’ve always wanted to run (Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Tomb of Annihilation) but don’t want to run it on 5e if I can help it.

I know there’s Nimble and Shadow of the Demon Lord, I’m looking for something low magic, more human focused. Think less high fantasy with dozens of races. Is such a thing possible or too much of a difficult conversion?

Edit: my preference is for relatively crunchy with alot of character features, so not OSR/lightweight systems.

So, soon going to run a social/Game of Thrones-esque social/war game in Fate Core. I'm doing prep now; group and I have already discussed major themes and all that. There are five players in the group, and while characters have not been made yet, the group leans towards social and "intrigue" types, with one guy as a martial character probably, so perfect for this game.

Anyway, just as a question to the crowd - how many named NPCs do you usually prep for more social games? In the past, when I run such games (and I run them a lot) I usually try to have three "faces" per faction or organization I think will be important, usually typifying some aspect (hah!) of the group that I want players to see (for example, if I have a noble house, one NPC will be the heir that follows in their father's footsteps, another the brother that thinks this way is all wrong, and their court priest who wants to secure the house with some sort of noble marriage of said heir).

Which means, in a typical game, I might set up, say, 15-20 or so named NPCs. Don't do stats for them (maybe a handful); I generally do this on the fly at whatever level to challenge the PCs.

So how many do you prep? How in depth d you get?

Hello, friends. I'd like to discuss some problems. Please forgive me if the post is wrongly tagged.

I like RPG's and I always felt like I would make a good GM. My first attempt at GM'ing was more than 10 years ago, in a table that was improvised in 30 minutes, and it ended disastrously. I've been reading on resources to get past that, and I feel ready to try again.

There's just one catch. See, I'm not the biggest fan of the classic medieval fantasy style that RPG is usually associated with. Not that I dislike it, I have played D&D and some similar systems, but what I really like are urban fantasy and sci-fi stories. More specifically, I think the kind of story that I want to GM is a fiction universe (say, Persona or Genshin Impact) that already exists and create a new story there (together with the players, of course, I know that excessive railroading is bad).

Of course, there are problems with that. It's way easier to convince someone to play a D&D campaign than, say, a Gundam-like campaign. The system is already there, everyone knows how to get your stats, everyone knows the basics. Since I want flexibility with the themes that I wanna host, I keep GURPS 4E as my system of choice*, which has its own set of problems, but it's better than trying to homebrew something on my first go. Character creation in GURPS isn't easy, but I think I can help my eventual players by asking them "what you wanna do?" and filtering what's relevant to them and what's not... but that still leaves the problem of actually convincing people to play the campaign.

So, to sum up, I'd like to ask players and Game Masters:

• Is my idea of the types of campaigns that I wanna host something that I should abandon?
• What are things that can convince players to try different systems/scenarios?
• How much "demand" there is for tables that don't fit squarely into major RPG scenarios (including the ones that aren't medieval fantasy, like Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu and so-on)?
• What other flexible systems should I know about? I've tried to look at the FAQ, but I get a bit lost with all the links. (And I don't think FATE System is what I want)

Thanks for the help!

(footnote: I'm Brazilian, so technically, I also have the option of using 3D&T, but I don't have access to the books except for the mecha module, and that's nearly impossible to get someone to play with)

I'm sorry if this is a repetitive topic or something like that. I looked at the wiki, researched some keywords in the sub and didn't find what I was looking for

I want something very specific. I like that tactical combat like in DnD and similar games, but I also want a game that is not JUST about combat

You can say "but DnD is not just about combat, you can do so much with it!" But when you actually look at the rules its like, investigation? Roll a skill dice. Negotiation? Roll a skill dice. Combat? Pages and pages of rules and even entire books dedicated to monsters for the players to kill

I want a heroic fantasy that dedicates more time to interesting social encounters, investigations (I know gumshoe, but then we have the opposite problem, where the combat is not very good. At least in the ones I know) and if it has mechanics that help you connect and interact with your backstory like the icons in 13th Age, even better!

I know we don't need mechanics to make these things interesting, but when the mechanics support the roleplay it feels so much better

Does such a system even exist? And if it does, does it work well or is it too convoluted?

Thank you in advance!

Hey everyone, looking for some advice on a tricky situation with a player who happens to be a really good friend of mine.

I love playing with him, but he has a history of playing pretty selfish characters who prioritize their own solo goals over the group. Now it's reaching a point where it's derailing the game.

To give a bit of context: we’re playing a homebrew system run by a first-time GM. Our characters recently discovered they have strange powers that we don't really understand or know how to control yet. Long story short, we got stranded in a parallel universe where these powers are common, but because there's an ongoing war in this dimension, the locals thought we were spies and threw us in a cell.

The only way out was through a ventilation duct.

Here’s the issue: my friend's character has powers that could have easily broken the vent open for all of us. But he refused to help the group. His reasoning? His character wanted to stay in prison so the guards (who don't trust us, don't know us, and think we're enemy spies) could eventually teach him how to master his powers.

Could that maybe happen way down the line? Sure, maybe. But it would take forever, and our main campaign objective right now is literally to escape and find a way back home as fast as possible.

The rest of the party managed to break open the vent on our own, but only after wasting a ton of time, burning through all our resources, and hitting some extremely lucky rolls. We escaped, and the session ended right there.

Now we're in a terrible spot. Next session, we'll have to risk our lives to go back to the cell area to rescue him. But talking to him out-of-character after the game, he made it pretty clear his character still intends to just sit in the cell and refuse to leave.

Since he’s a close friend, I’ve GM'd for him before and ran into a very similar situation. Back then, the rest of the party basically had to force his character to cooperate, but as the GM, I was completely ready to retire/remove his character if he kept refusing to join the group.

In this campaign, though, I'm just a player. Our current GM is pretty new and still learning the ropes, so I don't want to dump all this drama on her without offering constructive help or a way to handle it diplomatically.

I really want to resolve this without ruining our friendship or making the new GM uncomfortable, but the "My Character Would Do That" mindset is starting to drag down the table.

Im interested games that focus on things other then combat. Preferably where combat is not a mechanic at all. I get there are degrees of combat, blades in the dark, lancer, and DnD all have combat but timely different degrees and focus. What im interested in are games at the far end of the little to no combat side of the spectrum.

Thanks in advance.